A. The Dawn Sky.

On the horizon, shadowing the sky,
A single cloud is plastered to the east,
Waiting like a black glove to catch
The sun and steal the morning.
But then, the warning glow that comes is not from Sol,
Muted by the darkness.
It comes to set the heavens burning,
Its crimson fires paint the seagulls red,
Turning them as they fly to flames.
Sweeping the air towards the cloud,
They circle round it, as its colours
That Try to mold and match their own.
Rounding out its rim with gold
Like burnished lightning, frozen solid,
Recreating clouds in the round.


B. The Landscape.

The sea, tideless and untouchable,
Calmly and tirelessly reflecting the winds
Back and returning them to the air.
The cliffs, pink in the light,
Undersided images shimmering and shifting
With the slightest wave, streaked like marble
And merging into the immaterial sands,
Green fused to glass. Giant seaweeds, despairing
Of their submarine, forever swimming life,
Fight and mount against the cliffs
Like red and brown, imagining ivy. On the dunes,
The trees dance, lifeless and leaflessly
Silhouetted against the ground, posturing
In the wind like the shadows
Of gloomy, long dead actors.


C. The Corpse.

Duplicating the Island like, unmoving in the centre
Of an emerald covered plain of crystal,
Waiting for the resurrection:
The corpse lies, buried in death
Six feet higher than decency requires,
Body touched by high water, washed
And whitened By low tide sun blaze, preserved
By atmospheric isotopes. Bent
Into a pose of foetus-like, and wistful
Resignation, bloated by starvation
And by plague; a crab has crept
Into its safety, and there lies in its asylum
In fear of a similar passing, lost
In the unmoving desert.


D. Whisperings Of The Dead.

Silent as a pyramid, the ghost stands guard.
And watches over its former body,
Guarding it with mumbled indecencies
And unholy incantations, it rants
And chatters like an insane minister.
His memories, inevitable, hover above the ground.
Like multifaceted, multifactual mirages, displaying their ability 
To haunt the unwary, the diseased
And leprous wanderings of desperation,
And inescapable guilt.
Listen to his words, his muttered obscenities
Of button pushers and generals, confounding
Them as if his own unrelinquished apathy had not killed
His world just as much as their releasing
Of uncontrolled infinities.


E. Sunset At Ground Zero.

Red clouds in the west,
Dust thrown up by explosions
Which continue still in electric response
To unmanned and ill-mannered computers;
False dawn glowing in a mirror image world,
Reflections of the east in mushrooms.

                                      1976